Selective call receivers have various features which allow individuality in operation of the receiver. For example, features such as reminder chirps and low battery alerts can have the frequency of alert or type of alert programmable. Options for these features are programmed into a nonvolatile memory of the receiver and can be activated by the user or service provider. It is beneficial to have a variety of service provider activatable options to render the selective call service marketable with other services and to allow individuality in service provided while maintaining control over the receiver operation centrally with the service provider.
Service providers can reprogram these features via over-the-air programming. Over-the-air programming of selective call receiver options, though, have been limited to writing over the programmed option with the received reprogramming information. Some options, however, are necessarily incompatible with other options and overwriting can lead to ineffective and sometimes contradictory selective call receiver operation.
Thus, what is needed is a selective call receiver which can be intelligently reprogrammed over-the-air.